---
title: "7 Minutes to Master 120 Years of Marketing Evolution: Let's All Play Guru"
description: "To quickly grasp the history of marketing, start with one person: Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing. Understanding the evolution of his marketing thought gives you a clear framework for all marketing theories and methodologies. Modern marketing began with Kotler's first edition of \"Marketing Management\" in 1967, which integrated traditional concepts like market research, advertising, and selling into a new, innovative science."
author: "苗庆显"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2018-09-11"
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# 7 Minutes to Master 120 Years of Marketing Evolution: Let's All Play Guru

> To quickly grasp the history of marketing, start with one person: Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing. Understanding the evolution of his marketing thought gives you a clear framework for all marketing theories and methodologies. Modern marketing began with Kotler's first edition of "Marketing Management" in 1967, which integrated traditional concepts like market research, advertising, and selling into a new, innovative science.

To quickly understand the history of marketing, you first need to know one person. Once you understand the evolution of his marketing thought, all marketing theories and methodologies will form a clear outline in your mind.
This person is Philip Kotler, the master of modern marketing, known as the "Father of Modern Marketing."
Modern marketing? Does that mean there was "ancient marketing"?
Indeed! The mark of modern marketing's formation is Kotler's first edition of "Marketing Management" in 1967:
It blended traditional concepts like market research, advertising, and selling, elevating them into a brand-new, innovative science.
Marketing before that was "ancient marketing," but for better sound, we call it "classical marketing."
Kotler said: **"Economics is the father of marketing, behavioral science is the mother, mathematics is the grandfather, and philosophy is the grandmother."**
Tracing the grandparents' history is too far back; it's easier to start with the parents. **The fundamental purpose of marketing is to influence and change consumer behavior, and economics is the ecosystem marketing relies on.**
Where there is commerce, there is marketing. Hawking, long-distance transport, and gold-lettered signs are the primitive states of advertising, selling, logistics, and branding. There was marketing but no "discipline."
The rudiments of a "discipline" began after the printing industry developed. At that time, the marketing model was "advertising + selling," with advertising handled by third parties and enterprises responsible for sales.
In 1898, **Elmer Lewis**, the first president of the American Advertising Association, proposed the purchasing behavior law, namely the **AIDA principle: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action**. This principle was quickly applied by salespeople and advertisers. **This is the first theoretical marketing methodology in history**, exactly 120 years ago, a cycle of two jiazi.
With the prosperity of the printing industry, classical marketing entered the Madison Avenue era, with **Hopkins** making the most contributions to marketing science.
Methods like "**forced distribution," "test marketing," "coupons," and "sampling"** — still widely used today — were invented by Hopkins, who believed "**advertising is a science, and its essence is salesmanship**." Hopkins's banner was taken up and carried forward by the advertising pope, Ogilvy.
An important event: in 1923, **AC Nielsen was founded**, and **market research began to appear in the marketing field**, playing an increasingly important role.
From the early 20th century to the postwar 1960s, Madison Avenue was at its most glorious. Advertising agencies handled consumer communication, while enterprises handled R&D, production, and trade. Great brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, GE, Marlboro, Camel, Wrigley, and Adidas were born or grew rapidly during that period. Ogilvy, JWT, Leo Burnett, McCann, and others were all the rage.
President Roosevelt, who led America out of the Great Depression and to victory in World War II, deeply understood marketing's vital role in stimulating consumption and the economy, so he said a famous quote that tricked many advertisers into falling into a pit:
**"If I weren't president, I'd be in advertising."**
At this time, the practical school produced one and a half marketing theories. One was **Rosser Reeves's USP theory**, born in the early 1950s.
The Unique Selling Proposition holds that **advertising (marketing) should focus on a differentiating, penetrating point. Anything that goes against the USP is a vampire, sucking the blood out of communication effectiveness.**
What we now often call selling points, pain points, etc., are all in the same vein as USP. The "positioning" that emerged in the 1970s also has traces of USP, but from a different angle; the positioning system is more extensive.
The half theory is Leo Burnett's "creative philosophy" — **finding the "inherent drama" of (a product or brand)**. He advocated using "drama" to inspire consumers' purchase triggers and interest motives. It's called half a theory because Burnett described many methods but fewer methodologies. In 2017, Ye Maozhong created the "conflict" theory, where you can see some applications of "drama" and a more elevated condensation.
The above theoretical developments were concentrated in the practical field, mainly advertisers and salespeople, while academic behavioral scientists were also increasingly involved. **Sociologist Veblen proposed the concept of "conspicuous consumption" in 1899**, psychologist **Scott** first proposed applying psychological theories to advertising, and American psychologist **Gale's "The Psychology of Advertising"** was published, the first systematic account of how to use psychology to enhance advertising effectiveness.
The most influential event afterward was **behaviorist psychology founder John Watson** creating the **S-R theory, i.e., stimulus-response theory**. Watson then joined **JWT**, bringing his behavioral theories into the advertising world.
The above is the development of marketing from its "mother" — consumer behavior — before modern marketing was formed.
There was an event that seemed insignificant at the time but had profound influence later. In 1932, Procter & Gamble began using the brand management system.
Although called the **brand management system**, it should more accurately be called the "**product management system**." Product managers, in the form of "product general managers," were fully responsible for a product's market performance. This forced them to communicate with all company functions, including third-party advertising agencies and market research firms. Under this model, functions originally led by third parties — advertising creativity, placement, event marketing, market research — began to be integrated into enterprises. Enterprises later established marketing departments, and third parties became executors.
Marketing's father — economics — though old, began to nurture marketing around the same time as its mother, starting in the early 20th century. Because the threshold was high, they were academics, initially studying marketing as a branch of economics.
Representative figures include Edward D. Jones, Simon Litman, etc. What they specifically did, Old Miao doesn't know; I haven't read their works either, only evaluations by others: "They are pioneers of marketing science."
Marketing began to formally separate from economics in the 1950s and 1960s. That period saw many people and ideas contributing to marketing.
  * Before Kotler's magnum opus "Marketing Management," **John Howard** wrote a **"Marketing Management"** ; he was the first to propose "marketing management."
  * The big framework in marketing management, "**4P**," was proposed by **McCarthy** in his **"Basic Marketing"** around the same time.
  * **Wroe Alderson was the founder of the functionalist school of marketing.**
  * Sociologist **Rogers** proposed the **"diffusion of innovations theory."**
  * **Management gurus Drucker, Druker, and Levitt, editor of the Harvard Business Review**, also contributed their ideas and wisdom to the birth of modern marketing. But unlike Hopkins and Ogilvy, they generally did not recognize marketing's value in "selling."
  * **Levitt**, in his famous work **"Marketing Myopia"**, mentioned that **enterprises focus on manufacturing and selling products, while marketing is like a "stepchild."**
  * Drucker stated, **"The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous," and "a business has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation."**
  * In 1963, **Boston Consulting Group** was founded, and its invention of the **Boston Matrix** and other tools was also cited in "Marketing Management" a few years later.
**If Kotler is the father of modern marketing and the synthesizer, then Lewis, Hopkins, Reeves, Ogilvy, Howard, Drucker, Rogers, Levitt, McCarthy, and Henderson are all the founders of modern marketing.**
After the unification of marketing, enterprises placed much greater emphasis on marketing. Marketing was no longer just a combination of "advertising + selling + logistics," but **a systematic enterprise activity based on corporate resources, discovering consumer needs, and creating value while meeting market demands.** Theoretical development accelerated further. Kotler continuously supplemented and revised "Marketing Management" according to market changes, absorbing new marketing theories and refining them, now up to the 15th edition.
Meanwhile, **"Consumer Behavior"**, as a foundational discipline of marketing, was also reorganized and reshaped as a required textbook for marketing majors. Currently, "Consumer Behavior" has reached its 12th edition, catching up with "Marketing Management."
Almost at the same time Kotler published "Marketing Management," Ogilvy abandoned his inherited claim from Hopkins that "advertising is salesmanship" and proposed the **"brand image theory"**:
He believed **the brand image does not belong to the product but is a collection of consumer associations**. Therefore, enterprise marketing should develop and project an image. Consumers buy products for "**substantive benefits + psychological benefits**," and advertising and marketing should focus on using image to satisfy their psychological needs.
Two years after the first edition of "Marketing Management," in 1969, advertiser **Trout** proposed to his boss **Ries** the term "positioning" to summarize their advertising theory, and published the paper "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind." In 1972, the book **"Positioning"** was published, and the positioning theory was born. Nearly thirty years later, the theory was rated by the American Marketing Association as "the most influential idea on American marketing in history."
Through the efforts of Ries and Trout, positioning became a simple but vast theoretical system. Currently, this theory has many fans in China's marketing circles, with the widest audience: **cognition, focus, first, category, differentiation, mental ladder** are familiar to marketing enthusiasts.
In the 1980s, **Michael Porter's** competitive strategy theory was born. From 1980 to 1990, **"Competitive Strategy," "Competitive Advantage," and "The Competitive Advantage of Nations"** were published successively. It might be inappropriate to compare Porter, as the world's top strategy guru, with marketing. But under modern marketing concepts, "all employees and departments should be customer- and market-focused," and Porter's competitive theory's impact on marketing is evident.
However, the hottest marketing-related book in the 1980s was **Cialdini's "Influence"**: Isn't marketing about influencing consumer behavior? Cialdini analyzed human behavior patterns and gave you six simplest, most direct, and effective weapons to lead people by the nose. This "brainwashing"-like "sunflower manual" quickly sold globally, reportedly over two million copies. It was first introduced in China after the new century and has remained high on marketing and behavioral science bestseller lists.
In the 1990s, marketing entered another explosive period. **Don E. Schultz's Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)** shone across the marketing world. Old Miao believes IMC was almost tailor-made for today's internet marketing environment. Previously, I summarized a few keywords: **all touchpoints, information flow, communication integration, and interaction.** In one sentence, it's **"marketing equals communication."**
**David Aaker proposed the concept of "brand equity"** and published the brand trilogy: **"Managing Brand Equity," "Building Strong Brands," and "Brand Leadership," which for the first time in marketing history systematically elaborated on the significance of brand equity and the laws of building brands.**
Subsequently, **Kevin Lane Keller** conducted **comprehensive research integrating marketing communication and brand management**, and his work **"Strategic Brand Management"** is called the **"brand bible."**
Starting from the 12th edition of "Marketing Management," Keller was introduced as the second author, which is Kotler's "cunning move."
Marketing is a science; a key feature of science is falsifiability, and most scientific conclusions have usage boundaries. Open Kotler's "Marketing Management": it includes the AIDA principle born 120 years ago, the once-popular positioning and IMC, the hottest social e-commerce and community marketing, and even what Old Miao considers heretical "pyramid schemes," and some editions even include "The Art of War." But among these dozens of basic marketing elements and hundreds of methodologies, few are Kotler's own original theories.
For example, **Kotler's STP strategy**: S for market segmentation comes from Wendell Smith, T for target market from McCarthy, and P for market positioning from the well-known Ries and Trout.
**Compared to being a theory creator, Kotler prefers to be a verifier and organizer, enabling each theory to find its usage boundaries, optimal conditions, and combinations of tools under different conditions in the marketing environment, thereby maximizing marketing power.**
Entering the 21st century, the rapid development of the internet, especially mobile internet, has increased human connectivity. **James Harkin's "Niche: Why the Market No Longer Favours the Mainstream," Gladwell's "The Tipping Point," and Jonah Berger's "Contagious"** have been sought after, and even **Milgram's six degrees of separation theory and Le Bon's 19th-century "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind"** have been dug up and become hot topics again.
Jobs, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc., became new business heroes. China's Tencent, Alibaba, Xiaomi, etc., are also highly praised in the international marketing community.
As Kotler said, these are **"not disruption, but evolution."** Just as Schultz's IMC foresaw interaction and all touchpoints as communication points more than twenty years ago, masters like Kotler, Aaker, Ries, and Schultz still have profound insights into the current market and accurate predictions for the future of marketing.
In "Marketing 4.0," Kotler divided postwar market evolution into seven stages and proposed the marketing evolution path from Marketing 1.0 to Marketing 4.0.
> **Marketing 1.0: product-centric marketing, emphasizing selling, functional appeals, and differentiating selling points;**
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> **Marketing 2.0: consumer-oriented, adding emotional and image appeals beyond functional differences, with brand-centric companies rising;**
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> **Marketing 3.0: value-driven, people-oriented, customers need to interact with brands, understand, participate in, and even supervise all aspects of enterprise marketing;**
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> **Marketing 4.0: on the basis of value-driven, adding data-driven connections. Keywords: values, connection, big data, community, and new-generation analytics.**
Old Master Ke says this is the **"marketing evolution scroll that marketers must understand,"** but our "national conditions" are quite different. Our marketing developed late, but our internet development is globally leading, almost on par with the United States, as the only two "superpowers," so **our marketing development is extremely uneven.**
At least one-third of traditional enterprises are still in the Marketing 0.0 stage, meaning they have no marketing awareness at all. They just want to produce goods, attract distributors, or enter certain sales platforms, thinking that's all there is to it.
Most enterprises are in the Marketing 1.0 stage, emphasizing unique selling points, functional appeals, and differentiated positioning. This was once very effective in the domestic market and is still effective under certain conditions.
Few enterprises have entered the Marketing 2.0 stage. The word "brand" has been played badly here. Almost no one has read Keller's "Strategic Brand Management." Most successful brand-building cases in China are multinational companies like Coca-Cola and Nike.
On the contrary, some enterprises have entered the Marketing 3.0 stage, playing with consumers who have a certain number of fans and share "**consistent values and attitudes**." Apple is the pioneer, and Xiaomi, Durex, etc., are good practitioners. Domestically, people often use Marketing 1.0 concepts to judge that Xiaomi is failing, but they always get slapped in the face. Times have changed; it's like carving a boat to find a sword.
As for Marketing 4.0, it's an upgraded version of 3.0, with basically the same logic, but even fewer applications. Even in the United States, it's more about masters' forward-looking predictions and methodological research.
Primitive 0.0, industrial 1.0, consumer-oriented 2.0, value-driven 3.0, and prospective 4.0 — the phenomena and patterns of 120 years of Western marketing history can be seen simultaneously in our current market, which is quite a spectacle.
Source: Old Miao Tears Marketing (ID: yiheyingxiao)
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